bonfire night and this night (fi-i-i-i-i-i-ight!)

Kaboom!  This year we took Dulcie to the fireworks on Glasgow Green, along with about 15,000 other people.  It was Dulcie's first real-life experience of fireworks and the first time I'd been to a big display in ages.  We saw some toddlers freaking out a bit, but Dulcie absolutely loved it, especially the noise.  The fireworks had a superhero theme, lots of TV and film theme tunes - Batman, Wonder Woman and the like.  It was fun.

We started our evening off with a fish tea in an old-school type cafe not far from Glasgow Green.  Central Cafe?  Well, it was an interesting experience, but the food wasn't great and I wish I hadn't seen the nook and miniature sink (barely visible under all the dirty plates) that counted for a kitchen...  Thinking Dulcie was finished, Graham polished off her food while she was in the toilet.  This did not go down well!  He tried to claim he'd left her some, but even Dulcie was perfectly aware that green slivers of chip did not count.  Lack of flavour and hygiene notwithstanding, it was fun and CRAZILY BUSY with firework types and the waitress was nice.  It did take about 20 minutes to persuade someone to stop making chips long enough to take our money, though! 

Here we are all cosy, just waiting for the fireworks to start.  Dulcie's massive cardigan and bodywarmer combo made her head look tiny!

And here's one of the three of us taken by a kindly passerby. Very blurry, but family photos are rare so I'll share it anyway.

The journey home was quite an experience.  15,000 people filtering out a few small gates was sardiney to say the least and Dulcie was ready for bed by this time so I had to carry her, totally unable to see where I was putting my feet.  Graham cycled home while Dulcie and I got the underground.  I had never seen it so busy.  It took us about 20 minutes to get through the turnstiles and then Dulcie promptly fell asleep on my knee as soon as we got on the train.  A nice lady had offered us her seat, thank goodness.

That night Dulcie had a dream that one of the fireworks popped on her trousers and this is the news she'll share with anyone who asks what the bonfire was like. 

I think I'll have to give Dulcie one of these talks!

Ah, it was a fun night and sometimes it's good to focus on the positive past and forget about the crappy present, like the fact that I felt heart-horrible again all day, only to get in from a ten-hour shift (three hours of which were spent trying to solve an IT problem) to find someone had left Dulcie's bedroom door open and the cats had got in and poop-bombed it for a second time, adding a massive pool of furball-riddled vomit for good measure.  The only new carpet we've ever had!  Why, cats?! Why?!  By the time I'd cleaned that up, Dulcie was late for bed and I was puffing and panting like a dodgy phone caller.  Then there was the small matter of getting her to sleep and her nursery stuff to be sorted for the morning...  I HATE FINISHING WORK AT 8PM!

Well, you know what?  Now that I've written that, I'm feeling like kind of a superwoman.  I worked all day, sorted out a very tricky IT problem, dealt with cat excretions efficiently, read Dulcie's bedtime stories in a loving manner, made her a healthy lunch (home-made soup, people!) AND sat down to blog.  Yep, I'm amazing.  Some days muddling through IS amazing.  And I've got a toddler-free day off tomorrow to recover/achieve yet more :)

Go, me...  Yawn...